Wednesday

A cold front was poised to slip through the Palm Beach area Sunday packing some drier air, but not much cooler air. The National Weather Service in Miami promised "another little taste of fall South Florida-style to start the week."

Forecast highs should continue to drift lower through mid-week, with dew points falling below 70 as a low pressure system off the coast of the Carolinas lifts out to the northeast, dragging the dry air over the Florida peninsula.

Forecast highs are around 82 in Palm Beach into next weekend with lows in the mid-70s. The normal high is 86 and the normal low is 73, so you can’t blame National Weather Service forecasters for calling the event "a psuedo-cold front" in their Sunday morning weather analysis.

To find any honest-to-goodness fall weather Sunday morning, you had to go up into the Florida panhandle. It was 57 in Pensacola with a dew point of 56, and 55 at Elgin Airforce Base near Crestview, with a dew point of 53. It was in the low-60s in Northeast Florida and the mid-60s as you worked your way down the peninsula toward Gainesville and Orlando.

With the cooler air continuing to filter down the peninsula through the week, lows could dip into the high-50s in places like Gainesville on Wednesday night, the National Weather Service said.

Closer to home, you had to go up to Fort Pierce to find a sub-70-degree low on Sunday — 69 degrees, while the temperature bottomed out in Okeechobee at 66 with a dew point to match.

Palm Beachers looking for a more major cool-down may be heartened by the AccuWeather long-range outlook, which predicts highs in the high-70s the last week of the month.

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TROPICS TALK: There have been 10 named storms this year and most of them have been weak. Although we may see one or two more before the season wraps up on Nov. 30, it has (so far) turned out to be the slow season that many predicted in spring. The high wind shear that tore up storms such as Tropical Storm Erika and Grace as they headed toward South Florida can be attributed in large part to the strong El Niño in the Pacific.

But next year could be a different kettle of fish. NOAA is forecasting a 95 percent chance of El Niño conditions continuing through winter, and a 70 percent chance the phenomenon hangs around into May.

"By the end of the period (May-July 2016), neutral conditions are the most likely outcome (just over 50%), although the odds of La Niña are beginning to rise quickly by that point," Weather Underground’s Bob Henson said in a blog post. "Major El Niño events are often but not always followed by a significant La Niña during the subsequent northern fall and winter."

After the last strong El Niño during the winter of 1997-1998, we were back in La Niña conditions by the June-August period. That La Niña lasted through early spring of 2001.

After eight named storms in 1997, there were 14 named storms the following year, including Category 5 Hurricane Mitch; and 12 named storms in 1999 along with eight hurricanes and five major hurricanes.